Despite the fact that musicals and opera share the same dramatic roots, many fans of the former have never taken the plunge with the latter. It may be that they feel opera isn't for them, or that they don't know where to begin with an art form with four hundred years of history.

French writer Jules Janin, attending the first night of Giselle in 1841, forgot for a moment that he was sitting in a theatre. ‘The night throws its soft vapours over the entire countryside’, he wrote, ‘around us all is silent… The vapour is Myrtha, the Queen of the Wilis, and the first ray of the September moonlight has imparted to her the fine contours of her beautiful body.’ Around him sat an enraptured audience, delighted to let the dancers, costumers, scenery painters and lighting men transport them from a dusty Paris summer to the spirit-haunted forest of Giselle Act II.

People loved moonlight scenes in theatre, and the rays of the moon, usually painted falling through a window or across a painted ruin, were lit by a flood of green or blue light from the wings and flys. The ‘White Acts’ of Giselle and La Bayadère notwithstanding, blue and green is an integral feature of stage moonlight. John B. Read, relighting the balcony scene in The Royal Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet in 2007, remarked, ‘What colour is moonlight? Is it dark blue? Is it light blue? Is it even blue at all? Maybe it’s green, I don’t know. It could be white.’

Shakespeare, in broad daylight at the Globe or the Rose, never worried about stage moonlight at all and conjured up its beauty with his verse alone. But when his plays were staged in interior theatres nobody could resist lowering the lights (by swivelling the candles round on battens so they appeared to go out) and painting in the moon.

By the mid-18th century the moon was even perceived to shine. This was done by cutting a circular hole in the backdrop, to represent the moon, pasting a transparent gauze over the hole and shining an oil lamp on the gauze. A similar effect is used on the modern stage, with the hole replaced by a disc set behind a cyclorama, and the light shining on it the focussed beam of an electric lamp.

Focussed light, whether from a lump of overheated lime, or an electric carbon arc, was one of the great theatrical innovations of the 19th century. The appearance of a shaft of moonlight bright enough to create a shadow took everyone’s fancy. However, once the beam began to move, people became hyper-aware of the spotlight operator. W. S. Gilbert, for one, couldn’t see a spot without immediately thinking of the man behind it. Watching an improbable tidal wave effect in The Nightingale he noted, ‘The house is swamped and disappears. Mary alone on the wild waste of waters in a boat. Happily the presence of a lime light suggests that human aid is not far off…’.

But what if the moonlight was supposed to be eerie rather than brilliant? Well, a gauze shadow could pass over the moon, or the lighting men could attach a ‘gobo’ (a disc with punched out patterns) on to a lamp, to diffuse the beam.

But in ballet, it seems that you can ditch an actual moon and trust the scenery, costumes, dry ice and sheer technical brilliance of the dancers to induce a proper ghostly effect. The hypnotic opening of Act III of La Bayadère with its perfectly executed arabesques, repeated over and over again by the white-clad Shades, doesn’t need a moonbeam, and nor do the weightless, gliding veiled Wilis in Act II of Giselle.

This is an extract from Sarah Lenton's article 'Well Lit by Moonlight', available to read in full in the Giselle programme book. This is available in the theatre at performance times and from the ROH Shop.

We may think of Shakespeare as England’s poet, but he's a lot more international than that. In De Oscuro’s MacBeth the dancer-actors speak extracts from Shakespeare’s play not just in the original English, but also in a new Welsh translation by Mererid Hopwood and occasionally in Polish and Hebrew. They're far from the first to let Shakespeare loose in other languages.

Shakespeare originated an estimated 2,000 English words commonly used today – including ‘bump’, 'swagger', 'eyeball' and 'obscene'. Modern English wouldn't be what it is without Shakespeare. But the plays written 400 years ago by a man from the Midlands have had a global appeal for centuries.

Groundbreaking though the Globe's festival was, it did not showcase a new phenomenon. Shakespeare has been around in translation as far back as the poet's lifetime. In the early 1600s English theatre companies on tour in Europe performed versions of Shakespeare's plays, first in English but soon adapted to the local vernacular – a German version of Titus Andronicus was published as early as 1620. In some places the popularity of the plays engendered a whole new culture of theatre – Shakespeare is still seen as a key progenitor of German theatre.

Though German came first, translations to other languages followed in the 18th century, with Voltaire's French translations in the 1730s, Sumarokov's Russian in 1750 and translations into Italian (1756), Spanish (1772), Czech (1786), and more translations across the rest of Europe. On the back of the British Empire, Shakespeare was performed in Calcutta in the 1780s in Marthi, Gujurati and Parsi, and Urdu translations came in the 19th century. Elsewhere we have translations into Hebrew (1874), Japanese (1885), Arabic (1890s), Korean (1921) and Chinese (1922). With the translation of Hamlet into Klingon in 2000, you could say the final frontier has been crossed.

It's an amazing legacy. Ancient Greek drama flourished for less than a century, in just one city. Only a tiny fraction of the plays written have survived into modern times. And yet the influence they have had – not just on drama, but on every narrative art form, opera included – is immeasurable.

So what makes a tragedy? Writers from Nietzsche to Arthur Miller have rushed forward with their own definitions, but Aristotle, as one of the earliest writers on the form, remains for most the first port of call (though even he was writing a century or so after Greek tragedy's heyday). Still, the basics of his theory provide a valuable model.

Unity is central to Aristotle's definition of tragedy. The events of Greek dramas usually took place over just one day ('unity of time'). They often happen in just one location ('unity of place'). And they concern one protagonist, the events connected by direct, inexorable cause and effect ('unity of action').

That protagonist must be sympathetic. He or she should be generally decent, neither a saint nor a monster. It's only through an audience's ability to identify with the protagonist that the drama will be able to perform its dominant function; to bring about catharsis,by arousing pity and fear and ultimately providing resolution.

The events of the play lead towards the protagonist's catastrophe, or change of fortune. The catastrophe will be brought about both by some character flaw in the protagonist (what Aristotle called the hamartia) and also by the implacable action of cruel fate.

Simple plots depict just the catastrophe, but the best will include two further plot elements, tightly bound together through cause and effect. A character's actions have the opposite effect to the one he or she had anticipated in peripeteia, or reversal of intention. This leads to the protagonist'sanagnorisis, or moment of realization. This move from ignorance into knowledge precipitates the catastrophe.

For Aristotle, the play that came closest to perfecting the form was Sophocles' King Oedipus – the source for Mark-Anthony Turnage's opera Greek. Oedipus is our protagonist. His hamartia is that he does not know his true parentage. Oedipus is worried by prophecies that predict he will kill his father and sleep with his mother. The peripeteia is when a messenger, hoping to allay his fears, informs him that he is in fact not his parents’ son. His action actually prompts Oedipus to ask a series of questions that lead to his anagnorisis: he discovers he really has, in ignorance, killed his father Laius and married his mother Jocasta. This triggers the catastrophe: Jocasta hangs herself and Oedipus plunges the gold pins of her dress into his eyes, begging his brother-in-law/uncle to exile him.

There aren't many tragedies that follow Aristotle’s strict criteria to the letter. Turnage and Stephen Berkoff – who wrote the play that Turnage adapted for his libretto – have a last trick up their sleeve that subverts Sophocles' bleak moralistic message. But it's astonishing how many stories from across the intervening millennia map closely onto Aristotle's model, from Hamlet to The Wicker Man, from the Ringcycle to Mayerling. It's a formula for compelling, moving, excruciating drama – and probably will continue to be for as long as people are telling stories.

Ben Frost's new piece The Wasp Factory is every bit as disturbing as the book it is based on.

He speaks here about working with a source text for the first time and his approach to composition, which incorporates noises as well as notes: "There's an inherent democracy in my approach to music making... I don't make the voice of a string quintet any more important than the hiss of a snake or the cracking of ice or the sound of fire."

The production is a co-production between HAU Hebbel am Ufer and Laura Berman_Next, Berlin, and The Royal Opera and Holland Festival in collaboration with Cork Midsummer Festival. It has been made possible by support from Capital Cultural Fund Berlin and Nordic Culture Point.

Stage management is a tricky business. Co-ordinating the lighting, sound and all other technical aspects of a show takes diplomacy, dedication and real skill. In the case of Arthur Pita's The Metamorphosis, it's a sticky business too.

The production sees stage manager Ian Taylor and his team preparing over 10 litres of treacle for every show to be smeared all over Edward Watson, the rest of the cast and the stage.

'We're like air traffic control, telling every little plane what to do to get a safe landing,' Ian told Kristen McNally at a recent ROH Insights event that revealed the level of detail required when the team stage a production.

Watch our insight into staging The Metamorphosis:

The Metamorphosis runs until 23 March and is sold out, though returns may become available.The role of Gregor Samsa (performed by Edward Watson) is generously supported by Derek and Sheila Watson

Mark, a libertarian, atheist and punk addict, frequently clashed with his father, a self-employed builder and Methodist lay preacher with a love of opera. However, when Colin was diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), Mark developed a new appreciation for his father’s passion.

Bravo Figaro! tells of how Mark used opera to reach out to his father when other forms of communication were closed down by the effects of his father's illness. Subtitled ‘How to put on an opera in a bungalow in Bournemouth’, the show explores complex family dynamics and the power of music.

The show came into being when Mark was featured on Radio 4’s Saturday Live Inheritance Tracks, a programme in which guests choose tracks that remind them of their family. Mark chose an aria from the Barber of Seville. That year's director of the Deloitte Ignite Festival, filmmaker and musician Mike Figgis, was listening, and subsequently approached Mark to suggest collaborating on a project for the festival. In return, a group of Royal Opera singers performed for Mark’s father in his living room in Bournemouth.

The High House Production Park in Purfleet was a-buzz yesterday as students from all over the Thames Gateway came together to celebrate their work and share feedback on the final stages of the two projects: Metamorphosis and Bright Sparks.

A performance project, Metamorphosis was created by students from Commonside Children's Support Service in Harlow. Taking inspiration from ROH2's The Metamorphosis, the students composed songs and designed sets with professional artists, working towards a Bronze Arts Award in the process. After their performance they met Edward Watson, Principal of The Royal Ballet and star of The Metamorphosis, presenting him with their sets. It was clear from their enthusiasm how much it meant to the students who took part.

Bright Sparks was a collaboration between the Royal Opera House and students from a group of Essex secondary schools: Shoeburyness High, Basildon Academy, Brentwood Ursuline and Gateway Academy. The project asked students for feedback about their experience of arts education and how it could be improved. The Key Stage 3 students from each school shared lots of ideas with us about what they thought motivated young people to get involved in the arts, and have become Bright Sparks Ambassadors within their schools.

Students also had the opportunity to quiz arts professionals including scriptwriters, actors, digital set designers and our own Edward Watson on their career choices.We hope that events like this open up the arts to students and give us valuable information about how to engage them with the arts – everyone involved certainly seemed to have a great time!

We developed an Apprenticeship scheme at the Royal Opera House because we realised that the practical skills required by technical and production departments were not being taught on college courses. We offer training to people looking for a non-traditional way of entering the Arts and since the scheme launched in 2007 every graduate of the programme has found work in the Arts or undertaken further study.

Eight apprentices are employed at the Royal Opera House at any one time; four of these based in Thurrock and four in Covent Garden. We spoke to three of the current crop to get their thoughts on the experience so far:

Michael, our Scenic Carpentry Apprentice combines a college course with guidance from the team:

“No two days are ever the same; you’re constantly learning. The Foreman and other members of the team also help me out with my college work; if I have projects I need to complete, I can bring them in and get advice and practical demonstrations. They’re always very interested in my course and I’m able to juggle both.”

Our Scenic Arts apprentice Louisa had been working on set design for small German theatres for a year before coming to London to study for a BA at Central School of Speech and Drama. While there, she heard about the Apprenticeship scheme and successfully applied:

“You’re always learning at Thurrock. There is so much to discover about architecture, colour mixing, perspective etc. When the supervisors have identified specialist training needs, they’ve brought in freelancers to teach me skills. They’ve also sent me on anatomical drawing course at Central Saint Martins and have been very proactive and supportive about my learning process.”

Louise graduated from Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts this summer with a BA in Theatre Production Arts. She completed three weeks of work experience at Thurrock and has been asked to stay on till the New Year as part of the Scenic Arts team:

“While on the work experience placement, we were asked to complete a personal project. The supervisor looked at my portfolio from university and picked out a project she really liked – one where I’d taken a renaissance painting called The Last Breath and transferred it onto cloth. The team all took the time to help me re-create the project. As well as signposting me to books and materials, they gave me practical demonstrations of new techniques I should be using.”

The first apprentice to graduate, Ian Cowie, is one of the many success stories of the scheme. He was awarded Apprentice of the Year at the Building Crafts College and after completing his apprenticeship, was offered a full time role at the Royal Opera House. Other apprentices have gone on to work at Arts organisations such as the Sydney Opera House and the National Theatre. Each graduate is equipped with skills and experience that gives them an excellent footing for gaining employment in the industry.

If you’ve only seen Macbeth in its original form, there are significant parallels and dissimilarities between the opera and the play. Verdi was concerned to translate Shakespeare's theatre drama into the different language of opera and something that would work in the (then) modern world. Much as are there are imaginative cuts and condensations, the action of Shakespeare's play is carefully preserved and followed in his opera. The result is something which is both Verdi and Shakespeare.

1. Verdi did not want the soprano playing Lady Macbeth to make a particularly beautiful sound. He wanted her to sing with a tone that could be ‘hard, stifled, and dark’ with ‘something devilish’ in the vocal quality. This was one of the first occasions in the history of opera when a singer was instructed to make such a sound in the service of the drama; when potent characterization was given primacy.

2. Verdi took an intense interest in Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene, an interest akin to that of a modern cinema director, careful to capture the physical mannerisms of sleepwalking. He spent a great deal of time coaching the first Lady for the scene. She claimed that she spent months on the part, trying to imitate ‘those who talk in their sleep, uttering words (as Verdi would say to me) while hardly moving their lips, leaving the rest of the face immobile, including the eyes. It was enough to drive one crazy’.

3. Everyone knows that the three witches are essential to Macbeth, but Verdi does without them – he has an entire witches chorus. This was not uncommon in 19th-century productions of Shakespeare’s play, as theatre expert Sarah Lenton writes in the programme for The Royal Opera’s production. Verdi was very particular about the effect he wanted from his witches, telling Francesco Maria Piave, his librettist, that the witches’ choruses ‘must be vulgar, yet bizarre and original (triviali, ma stravaganti ed originali)’. The witches’ diabolic humour acts as a foil to enhance the sublimity of other parts of the opera.

4. Verdi was fascinated by the supernatural – the power of curses in Rigoletto, Il trovatore and La forza del destino and the prophecies of the fortune-teller in Un ballo in maschera, but only three of his operas contain ghostly beings. Verdi’s early opera Giovanna d’Arco features demons who tempt Joan of Arc, and Don Carlo ends with the appearance of the ghost of Emperor Charles V of Spain. Macbeth is the one of Verdi’s operas most directly concerned with the supernatural, with its witches, the appearance of the ghost of Banquo in Act II and the ‘Show of Kings’ in Act III – a procession of kings, who Macbeth realizes are Banquo and his descendants. Interestingly, King James I of England, for whom Shakespeare wrote Macbeth, was thought to be a descendant of the Scottish lord Banquo of Lochaber on whom the character of Banquo was based.

5. Verdi’s operas are famous for their powerful scenes between lovers, and between fathers and daughters but Macbeth has neither. Instead, Verdi explores the dysfunctional marriage of a middle-aged couple, and the corrupting effect of power.

6. Verdi wrote Macbeth at the age of 34 in 1847. It was his tenth opera. Eighteen years later, he revised the work for a production in Paris at the Théâtre Lyrique, Le Châtelet. He added a new aria for Lady Macbeth in Act II and made substantial alterations to Act III, including a new duet for Macbeth and Lady Macbeth and a ballet (now usually cut). A new chorus, of Scottish refugees, was added to the beginning of Act IV. At the end of Act V, Verdi changed the death of Macbeth, having his anti-hero die offstage and ending the work with a new ‘victory’ chorus rejoicing at the death of the tyrant. The Royal Opera perform the 1865 Paris version of Macbeth, which is dramatically more powerful, and closer in atmosphere to Shakespeare’s original play.

7. Verdi spoke little English and would have read Shakespeare in his native Italian, and read it as literature, rather than seeing it performed onstage. It would have lost some of its original poetry and tragic power in translation. Verdi only saw the play Macbeth staged in 1847, the year of the premiere of the first version of his opera Macbeth. Shakespeare was rarely staged in Italy in the 1840s, and Verdi saw the play in a visit to London, some months after the premiere of his opera.

7. By the time Verdi revised Macbeth in 1865, he’d seen the play performed several times, in France, Italy and in England. Each time he saw Shakespeare’s play, he took careful notes on staging. He wrote a long and detailed letter to his Parisian publisher, stating how he wished the opera to be staged. For example, he wanted the ghost of Banquo to rise up through a trapdoor in Act II, with a large wound on his head, and stand immobile, staring at Macbeth. He sent plans of where singers should stand in each act. He also wrote at length on the relative importance of the characters, stating that the most prominent roles were those of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth and the witches’ chorus, and that Macduff only ‘becomes a Hero’ at the end of the opera.

9. Verdi loved Shakespeare and many think that he is the nearest to Shakespeare in the character of his dramatic genius. Macbeth is the first of his three Shakespearian operas. In the 1880s Verdi began a new collaboration with the writer and composer Arrigo Boito, who wrote librettos for Verdi’s two late great Shakespearean operas: Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893) based on Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor and scenes from his Henry IV plays. For much of his career Verdi also wanted to write an operatic version of King Lear, but couldn’t find the right singers for this project. He also thought about setting Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and Hamlet, though neither of these projects were ever developed.

10. Verdi was active in politics, particularly in the attempts – eventually successful – to unite the various Italian states. The theme in Shakespeare’s Macbeth of the downfall of a tyrant and the liberation of a country under occupation particularly appealed to Verdi. Act IV of the opera includes a typical Verdian plea for national freedom, as a chorus of Scottish exiles sing of their longing for their ‘patria’ (homeland), while Act V ends with a victorious chorus as the Scots people hail the return of their rightful king.